About almost the same time last year, I purchased my first laptop in a long time. I hadn’t had much use for a laptop before but I needed one for work and I chose to go with a Dell XPS 13 after all the great reviews I heard about them. If you read my initial review on that laptop, you’ll know that I initially had a problem with the first unit I bought where it wouldn’t turn on at all and the Microsoft Store exchanged it for me, no questions asked. The second unit worked perfectly for about a year and I honestly loved every aspect of it, until last Friday when it just stopped working. Pressing the power button did nothing even though it has full charge. Instead of waiting a month for Dell to get it fixed and me possibly having the same issue again, the Microsoft Store allowed me to exchange the Dell another laptop of the same price. This time around, I decided to go for the HP Spectre x360 convertible laptop.

The exact model of this HP Spectre x360 is [13-ae091ms]. This is a Microsoft Store Signature Edition version which means it does not come preloaded with a bunch of junk software. It came with a Core i7 8th Gen processor, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and a stylus. It also still has a regular USB port along with 2 USB-C ports, one of which is also for charging the laptop. It even has a fingerprint reader, though it’s located in a really odd spot. It does not however have a full sized SD-card slot and only has the micro-SD slot. I’m not sure how big of an issue this is going to be for me, but I do have a card reader that I carry with me anyways.

For the most part, I do like how the HP Spectre x360 looks. It’s sleek, pretty well made with its aluminum chassis, and isn’t that much larger than the Dell XPS 13 was. Time will tell though how reliable this will be and if I’ll still like it several months from now. Until then, there will be a more in-depth review soon as this will be a long term review.